“Kanae-kun?! Wh-what are you doing back in Sodeshima?!” I asked in disbelief as I slowly made my way over to his desk.
“Oh, yeah. The high school I was going to shut down, actually. So I decided to come back here.”
“W-wow, that’s crazy…” I said. Then all the strength drained from my body at once. I collapsed to my knees right there in the middle of the classroom.
“You won’t have to push yourself so hard anymore, Akari,” he said, reaching down to help me up. “We can just take things slow and enjoy ourselves like old times.”
“Yeah… I’d like that,” I said, taking his hand and letting him pull me back up to my feet. Then we went up to the roof of the school and ate lunch together. I was so happy, so relieved, and so excited that I couldn’t stop talking. Kanae sat there with a smile on his face, listening to every word.
“Akari,” he interrupted at one point, staring deep into my eyes as he brought his face in close to mine. I froze up like a porcelain doll, too astonished to move an inch. He brushed his hand gently against my cheek and then pulled it away again.
“You had a little bit of rice on your face,” he said.
“O-oh, is that all? Sheesh! Tell me that before you start comin’ in hot next time! Ah ha ha…” I teased, laughing it off. The laughter quickly segued into tears. Because I knew by that point that it was all just a dream. That sooner or later, I was going to have to open my eyes and face another day of my waking nightmare. And yet, I still didn’t want to let go of this moment. I wanted to stay here with Kanae and hold on tight to every last second I could get. Even if it was all a lie.
“Don’t cry, Akari,” he pleaded.
And I tried. In that moment, I would have done anything for Kanae. The problem was that he’d asked for the one thing that I couldn’t possibly grant.
“…Hey, Hoshina-senpai! Wake up!”
Wearily, I became aware that someone was shaking me by the shoulders. I cracked my eyes open and saw one of the younger girls from the swim team staring back at me as though I were causing a public disturbance to embarrass her.
“We’re back in Sodeshima. It’s time to get off.”
“…M’kay,” I mumbled drowsily. I thanked her for waking me and rose from my seat. I would often doze off on the ferry ride like this, the slow undulations of the waves beneath the boat lulling me to sleep. I stepped off the boat and out of the harbor, then stretched out my arms and took in a deep breath. All around me were the sweet scents of spring.
I was a sophomore now. Advancing a grade level didn’t mean my hectic schedule had gotten any easier, sadly. Every day remained a perilous balancing act between school, swimming, and work…but I did feel like I’d started to make progress. Slowly but surely, my grades were getting better, and I had a pretty nice chunk of change saved up. My swimming career was similarly on the upswing.
My teacher said I might even be able to apply for an athletic endorsement from the U of I, explaining that it was an alternate way for students who achieved great feats in specific sports to gain priority admission without enduring the rat race of traditional applications and public endorsements. In my case, all I’d really need to do to qualify was make it to nationals in swimming. The good news was that there was much, much less competition for those applying for athletic endorsements compared to general admission. They usually came with a pretty hefty scholarship, to boot. As someone whose family was strapped for cash to start, this was a pretty attractive option, so I reallocated some of my time and mental resources from studying to swimming. In order to compete at the national championship tournament, I’d first need to win big at the district preliminaries which were held only once per year in the summer. As a sophomore, I had two chances left. I knew I’d have to push myself even harder than I already had been to make it there, but I was determined to claim that sweet, sweet scholarship money.
I worked myself to the bone, getting my crawl stroke time as low as I possibly could. I watched the numbers dwindle smaller and smaller, along with the amount of sleep I got each night. To be fair to myself, that wasn’t entirely due to me practicing all the time. It was largely because of my brother. Lately, my brother was bringing his friends back to the apartment about once every three days. Since my mom worked late into the night, he and two or three of his buddies would hang out in his bedroom, getting drunk and cracking jokes until the early hours of the morning. All night, I was subjected to vulgar cackling, juvenile hooting and hollering, and unrepentant stomping. It was so loud that there was literally no escaping it. I’d try to pull my comforter up all the way over my head to shut out the noise, but the walls of our apartment were so thin that their booming voices and howling laughter still made my eardrums throb painfully all through the night. Being unable to get the sleep I so desperately needed, even for the few short hours my stressful schedule allowed, was torture. As the night drew on, and the sleep deprivation got worse and worse, I started to get so agitated and restless that it felt like I might go crazy.